Rocky Mountain Hideaway (To Love Again Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t know. But with the cinched waist, and teasing glance of shoulder, it looked sexier than any fine lingerie she might have modeled for him.
     
    He was surprised how much he had revealed over supper. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his father or his family with Isabel. She was a psychologist, after all. What would she be thinking about him?
     
    It hadn’t been the year since his father died that had been the hardest on him, but the years leading up to it. With the family in so much turmoil, for a while it had seemed that peace would never come back into his life. Sadly, no one could agree on what was best for his father, and Tray seemed to be the only one who wanted to listen to his father’s opinion. The man knew he was near the end and wanted to make his own decisions about how he would die. Somehow, they’d managed to put it behind them, and unite as a family in the final days of his father’s life, but the sting of the final conversation with his sister Sheryl remained with him. Forgiving was one thing. He knew that forgetting was another.
     
    When he’d first gone to college, he’d drifted through his classes. He’d been so glad to get off the farm, and truth was, it was his father who’d had the dream of college, not Tray. Tray had found himself coasting - a typical, under eager college student. He hadn’t done well that first year, and it was only mid-way through the second year - when he found psychology - that things had started to click for him.
     
    Then came the fatal phone call that Tuesday afternoon in the dorm. Tray remembered standing in the hallway, phone pressed to his ear, jaw slack. And his mother repeating: Are you there, Tray? Are you there?
     
    Three long years later he had the ranch in good running shape and had been able to bring some peace to his father’s last years. But those three years had also almost killed him. Watching his father die was painful enough, but the diagnosis had been six months. When that stretched into a year, the doctors said again he only had six months. He’d had six months, six times, before they finally said goodbye. By that time, even the most desperate in the family had been ready to let him go. It was unbearable to see him in so much pain and he wasted away into a shadow of the man Tray had worshiped growing up.
     
    It hadn’t taken Tray long to wrap up his business on the farm. His brother was ready to take over. Michael had a new baby and was happy to settle in with their mother. Luckily his wife was agreeable, too. No one wanted to leave Mom alone in a house that had been filled with a loving husband, and children, and so much laughter for so many years.
     
    Tray packed his things into his Camaro and left for college. A deja-vu of his departure five years earlier. Only this time, he was driven. He couldn’t study enough, couldn’t research enough, couldn’t finish his degree fast enough. His father had wanted him to go to college: something he’d never had the opportunity to do. ‘Get off the farm, boy,’ he would say. ‘Find something you love, and see the world. Grab a girl – make her your own.’ Tray used to laugh, thinking the old man a sentimental fool. A walking, talking top-40 song. But now, he had every intention of making that sentiment come true.
     
    It would start with Isabel. If he could build his confidence with women, he’d be able to find the right woman to settle down with. He had two terms left and then he’d begin his graduate studies. He was hoping to get married along the way. Maybe to another psychology student. Maybe to someone completely different. He knew that opposites attract.
     
    Maybe that was all he was feeling with Isabel. He hoped so, because he’d made a promise to not get emotionally attached in the middle of this. But he was finding it increasingly difficult. Isabel was such a cutie patootie. That fiery crown and quirky smile. Those perky breasts.
     
    Where was Isabel, he wondered. She’d been